The invention relates to system integration technology, and more particularly, to systems and methods for manufacturing execution system (MES) integration.
A conventional MES may be an integrated computer system representing the methods and tools used to accomplish semiconductor device production. For example, the primary functions of MES may include collecting manufacturing data in real time, organizing and storing the manufacturing data in a centralized database, work order management, fabrication tool management and process management. Examples of MES include Promis (Brooks Automation Inc. of Massachusetts), Workstream (Applied Materials, Inc. of California), Poseidon (IBM Corporation of New York), and Mirl-MES (Mechanical Industry Research Laboratories of Taiwan). Each MES may have a different application area. For example, Mirl-MES may be used in applications involving packaging, liquid crystal displays (LCDs), and printed circuit boards (PCBs), while Promis, Workstream, and Poseidon may be used for IC fabrication and thin film transistor LCD (TFT-LCD) applications.
Typically, different MESs respectively include different software interfaces to remotely execute process controls, such as creating an empty wafer lot, holding a wafer lot, banking a wafer lot, releasing a held wafer lot, releasing a banked wafer lot, and the like. As a result, different software interfaces must be learned by operators, thereby decreasing operating performance. In view of this limitation, a need exists for systems and methods for providing a common interface to execute process control operations in various MESs.